The counterfeiting of products is a growing industry that costs companies more than $500 billion annually. In addition to the cost, counterfeit products can be dangerous to consumer health and safety. Ingestion of counterfeit foods, beverages and pharmaceuticals can have tragic consequences. For example, thousands of deaths occur every year due to presence of methanol in counterfeit liquor.
The ingredients of a counterfeit product may be the same as or may be different from those of the genuine product. Even if the ingredients are the same, they may be of inferior quality or may have been adulterated. Product adulteration is when a product is tampered with such as by dilution. An example of such a problem is in the liquor industry where bottles may be refilled or diluted with an inferior product in order to extend the product and to avoid paying taxes.
Efforts exist to authenticate products including use of fluorescently labeled antibodies, addition of light-emissive chemicals to a product, spectroscopic scans against a memory of the authentic brand profile, protein electrophoresis, infrared analysis, gas chromatography, pH, and Raman spectroscopy, among others.
U.S. Patent Publication No. 2006/0035288 to Green et al. relates to methods of detection of counterfeit liquids and foods wherein two or more markers are added to the liquid or food product and presence of the markers is later determined by assay. Use of haptens as marking materials is cited by EP 0 327 163 to Shell Internationale and published Aug. 9, 1989, by U.S. Pat. No. 5,776,713 to Garner et al which issued Jul. 7, 1998, and by U.S. Pat. No. 5,429,952 to Garner et al. which issued Jul. 4, 1995. Gradient lateral flow devices have been described by Rittenburg, J. H. in U.S. Pat. No. 5,710,005 issued Jan. 20, 1998 and in U.S. Pat. No. 6,140,134 issued Oct. 31, 2000. U.S. Pat. No. 6,068,981 issued May 30, 2000 to Rittenburg et al. relates to marking of orally ingested products that pass into a body tissue or fluid in a detectable form. U.S. Pat. No. 5,942,444 issued Aug. 24, 1999 to Rittenburg et al. relates to marking products using a print molecule, print molecule analogue, or molecularly imprinted molecule.
Rapid, cost-effective, and enforceable methods of authenticating an ingestible product are particularly needed in the industry that produces ingestible products.